Page 1 of Fighting Gravity
1: Quinn
Age 21
The club lights were blinding. And I mean blinding. Or maybe it was that weird shit Jacob cracked into my drink that was making everything fuzzy and brighter than the sun. Normally, I would have said something if I caught a guy putting shit in my drink, but when your life goes to hell, you tell the universe to bring it on.
There’s a certain point in a person’s life when they really can’t take it anymore. The abuse reached its peak and I was just daring the world to make it worse just so I knew I hadn’t hit rock bottom yet.
Yeah, I know it doesn’t make sense, but I was having a moment. I drank that stupid drink and the next thing I knew, I was floating. Lights had hair, smells had thorns, and my toes felt tingly. And also I was horny, which I was sure was the real point of what Jacob had done.
Fuck it.
As soon as I was feeling loose enough, I let him take me into the back room of the shady parking garage club. The place was big and made of concrete, built in the industrial district where most of the buildings were empty and abandoned. So loud noises didn’t matter because no one was around to complain. Thick industrial beats bounced off the walls and hit me from all directions and honestly, I was excited to go somewhere less loud.
A little back room was the best we could do and with all the noise (and other people fucking around) no one would care what we were doing. Out in the middle of shit-face town, people also didn’t care that virtual sex was basically nonexistent. Everywhere else, people were scared even to breathe the same air, but there were places where no one cared anymore. About anything. When you’re looking to escape into the pits with narcotics and alcohol, physical sex is the least of your worries. While the rest of the world was obsessing over how to make physical contact all but disappear from human lives, people in that particular corner of existence gave no shits at all.
And I was one of them.
How the fuck did I get here?
Dizzy and careless, I let Jacob put me up against the wall. He wasn’t the most gorgeous guy in the world—or the sweetest, for that matter—but I wasn’t at my best at the time either. For the past year, a couch and potato chips had been my best friends followed by changing medications and a whole lot of emotional baggage.
In other words, I was worthless.
Jacob went for my skirt first. He didn’t care for the rest of my clothes. This wasn’t some sugary little date. This was a quickie in a dusty back room.
My head was spinning. Alcohol churned in my stomach. Lights were flashing in my face. Jacob’s fingers felt like needles when they slid up my legs. He turned me to face the wall and I nearly toppled over, my feet feeling numb.
Ok, so maybe things were a little too intense. Being horny became an afterthought, but I couldn’t protest. I’d led him on too much. My heart started to race and not in a good way. Jacob’s hand slid between my legs and found me with no panties.
I was looking to get laid, what can I say?
But not like this.
“You been waiting for me, baby?” Jacob said in my ear, practically shouting to get his voice past the music.
My skin felt clammy and not because I was dancing for the last two hours. Long black hair stuck to my sticky, bare shoulders.
“Hang on,” I muttered, my voice lost in the noise.
His fingers found my center and all of a sudden… lights burst in my eyes.
What exactly did he give me?
My muscles seized. I gripped the wall, nails breaking on the concrete. My spine bowed and I fell to the floor.
“Quinn? What the fuck?”
My stomach turned again and my jaw clamped so hard I thought I would shatter all of my teeth. I didn’t know what a seizure felt like, but if I had to guess, I was having one. Or maybe I was just having some ridiculously horrible allergic reaction. Whatever it was, maybe it was for the best. The world didn’t need me. My family didn’t need me. Hell, I couldn’t even stand myself enough to resist the drink Jacob doctored.
And just like that, everything went black.
So, the self-sabotage succeeded miserably, as you may have guessed. Waking up in the hospital with your stepmother shouting profanities at you while you zone out staring at a television might sound intense, but oddly, I was used to it. There was a commercial on the TV for some space bullshit on the Nexus. “The Nexus Needs You.” They wanted biologists, geneticists, linguists, and a bunch of other stuff I didn’t care about. And even if I did, I finished high school practically by bribing my teachers and that didn’t lead to the fancy degrees the Nexus was looking for.
I was all hooked up to needles and tubes. My stomach had been pumped and they hadn’t fed me yet, so I felt empty and cramped and sore. I smelled like spilled tequila and sweat and if I had anything to throw up, I might have hurled all over Rebecca just to shut her up. She was perfect, my stepmother. Like a model with all the cosmetic surgeries money could buy to make her look my age when she was really twice as old.
But she wasn’t my mom, even if she constantly forgot that.
“I’ve talked to your father,” she said, out of breath after spending the last ten minutes screaming. “You’re cut off. No more spending his money on drugs and alcohol and crap.” I turned to look at her perfect blue eyes. “Oh, now you listen? Yeah. Your father agrees. You are done. Done, Quinn. If you want to destroy your life, you’ll have to do it on your own dime.”
